When we see a vulture, we think of it as a scavenger. In our concept, we can appreciate the domineering of the king such as lions and tigers, and we can also appreciate the meekness and cuteness of deer and lambs, but we feel that scavengers emit a foul smell because of scavenging, and their appearance is not good-looking, and even some "obscene", so scavenger vultures are not popular with people.
But if you really understand the role of scavengers, maybe you'll change your mind about scavengers.
<h1>vulture</h1>
Compared to other birds, the most obvious feature of vultures is that their heads are bald. The reason why vultures are bare heads is actually because their food is mainly the remains of various mammals, and when eating biological remains, they will give priority to the internal organs inside the abdomen, they will go deep into the abdominal cavity, the bare skin is conducive to them reaching into the abdominal cavity, and will not stick microorganisms, carrion and so on inside the abdominal cavity on the head.
Vultures also have a longer ring of feathers at the base of their necks, which is also rare in other birds. Keeping the feathers at the neck longer is also for the convenience of scavenging, to prevent carrion from falling on the body when eating, staining the feathers on the body, after all, their chest and legs are rarely waterproof positive feathers.
Vultures like to feed on carrion, but finding carrion is not an easy task, and usually vultures will hover down the updraft into the sky and then observe the animals on the ground. Animals living on grasslands and plains like to live in groups, because plains and grasslands lack shelter, herbivores cannot be invisible, so they can only gather together, and once one individual finds a natural enemy, the others can escape in time.
Carnivores also find it difficult to use ambushes to kill their prey, and they can only fight in a team hunting mode.
If vultures find that an individual is left alone, they will quietly observe each other, and if the individual remains motionless during the observation, then the vulture will judge that the individual is dead, and they will approach very cautiously, but they are afraid that this is the other party's trick. But the temptation of food will prompt them to move forward and then eat.
Once other vultures find that a vulture has fallen to the ground, it means that it has found food, and other vultures will rush up. The vultures who arrived first were able to take advantage of the position and eat the softer abdomen and internal organs, while the latecomers could only get some scraps, sometimes not even this, because the lions would join the scavenging animals and drive them away. Spotted hyenas and other scavengers will also rush to drive them away when they see vultures eating, seizing carrion.
Because of this, vultures eat very fast, able to swallow about 1 kilogram of meat in about 1 minute, and a group of vultures can eat a cow in just a few hours.
And the vultures are very digestible, they can even eat the bones of living creatures, after the vultures eat, basically only the corners that are difficult to swallow, as well as the thick bones, are basically left.
After eating, the vultures will use the sediment to care for their feathers, clean up the carrion and microorganisms on their bodies, and then open their wings to bask in the sun to kill the parasites carried in the wings.
<h1>The role of vultures</h1>
We know that after death, the microorganisms in the body will be out of the control of immune cells, so that they will breed rapidly; and the microorganisms outside the body will begin to decompose the biological remains.
These microorganisms can contaminate the surrounding environment and contaminate the surrounding land with rainfall, and if other of the same kind passes by, it can lead to infectious diseases. For example, there is an old saying in China that "there is a great epidemic after a catastrophe", which is because the biological remains after the catastrophe are too late to be processed, so that the spread of epidemic diseases. The vultures feed on carrion, which can clean up the microorganisms on the grassland and prevent the occurrence of infectious diseases.
Of course, not all animals can feed on carrion, it is important to know that there are not only many microorganisms in carrion, but also many biotoxins. When microorganisms decompose biological remains, they will produce a large number of biological toxins, such as: botulinum toxin, if they do not have detoxification function, or do not have immune function to this toxin, it will lead to diarrhea and even death after eating carrion.
Vultures are able to feed on carrion because their stomach acid is so strong that they kill most of the microorganisms contained in carrion. In addition, they have evolved a strong immune function during evolution, can be immune to a variety of biological toxins, and can also coexist with many pathogenic bacteria, so they eat carrion without affecting health.
After the vultures eat carrion, they will excrete relatively clean feces, which contain not many microorganisms and do not threaten the grassland ecology. That is to say, vultures eat carrion with more microorganisms and excrete relatively clean feces, thus completing the purification function of the grassland.
If the number of vultures on Earth declines, or if the scavengers disappear completely, the dead creatures on Earth will not be broken down by microorganisms, so that corpses will be scattered all over the field. Coupled with the fact that no scavenger digests carrion, it will be more likely to cause infectious diseases in nature, so that all living things will be at risk of death.